


Kareen's Lament.

by Lanna Michaels (lannamichaels)



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Podfic Available, Sestina, Time Period: Reign of Ezar Vorbarra, Vorkosigan Impromptu Poetry Battle, Winterfair Open Exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-30
Updated: 2012-01-30
Packaged: 2017-10-30 09:38:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/330334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lannamichaels/pseuds/Lanna%20Michaels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A sestina for the <a href="http://bujold-fic.livejournal.com/302453.html">impromptu poetry battle</a>!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kareen's Lament.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Philomytha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philomytha/gifts).



> Written for Philomytha's Winterfair Open Exchange 2012 prompt: _Something about Princess Kareen (conversations with Ezar? Negri? Aral? Serg if you're very brave? why she married him? Kareen/Drou?)_.
> 
> * * *
> 
> Podfic by [](http://nickelmountain.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**nickelmountain**](http://nickelmountain.dreamwidth.org/) is available [here](http://nickelmountain.dreamwidth.org/40317.html) and [here](http://nickelmountain.livejournal.com/62621.html?format=light). :D

To call this insanity an Empire  
is to be kind. To call this a marriage  
is to be kinder still, and more cruel. Though I am young,  
I know this world, my Barrayar.  
the land of death and birth,  
the land where a dream

dies without ever being more than a dream.  
Because this is Empire,  
a prison where your power is your birth  
and your birth is your power. Where your marriage  
is a chain around your neck. This is Barrayar,  
a land that consumes its young

whole, makes them forget they are young,  
stripping them of any held-close dream  
of a better world. This is Barrayar,  
where I am sacrificed to the insanity that is Empire,  
sacrificed to a monster through this marriage  
that is no less worthy to be called horror than the myth of birth

from a powerful man's skull, a birth  
that will never allow you to be young --  
a woman's birth. Because marriage  
is a constant -- to dream  
of something else is to deny the forces of Empire,  
deny the prison of this women's world of Barrayar,

where you are staked out to die. Not the men's world of Barrayar,  
a land where your noble birth  
means you may fight and die for your Empire  
and waste your youth on wars, where being young  
means that you may yet still dream  
and believe your marriage

may be a joy and not merely a marriage  
of men's power through the coin of women's bodies. On this man's world of Barrayar,  
I am a woman. And any longed-for dream  
is tied in jeweled chains until a birth  
of a son, one more innocent young  
dreamer to be sacrificed to the beast of Empire.

Caught in this marriage, chained until a birth  
on Barrayar, where young  
and old men alike yet still dream of Empire.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Kareen's Lament](https://archiveofourown.org/works/405484) by [nickelmountain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nickelmountain/pseuds/nickelmountain)




End file.
